Technology

Robotic hand enabled with ‘sense’ for optimal grip

370644_Robotic-hand

A UK-based company has developed a robotic hand outfitted with sensors, which enable it to attain optimal grip over the objects it is presented with.

The fingertip-mounted sensors make it possible for Shadow Robot Company’s Dexterous Hand to calculate the pressure it needs to apply to hold an object.

Managing director Rich Walker said, “What we’ve tried to do is put intelligence into the robot hand, and that means sensing. So we’re adding sensors on the fingertips that can understand how the robot is touching the world and interacting with it….”

Externally, it is connected to 3D cameras, which provide it with input on the object. The company hopes to incorporate the cameras into the device.

Walker said, “What we’ve found really exciting is we have customers who are using this hand to develop next-generation prosthetics by looking at, for example, what does a brain-computer interface look like to control a robot hand? How do you get that to work?”

“We’re exploring applications of the hand in areas where you’d really like to put a person but can’t. And that might be a search and rescue scenario where you send a robot in somewhere and now you want to lift something up, move something out of the way. Or equally, that might be working on a nuclear site where you have a hot cell where you can’t put a person in, but you really like human agility and dexterity there,” he noted.

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